“If you bought the fourteenth floor, you could get married. And have room for children,” Enid said.
“I love you, Nini,” Philip said. “But not that much.”
Enid smiled. She found Philip’s sense of humor charming. And Philip was so good-looking—endearingly handsome in that boyish way that women find endlessly pleasing—that she could never be angry with him. He wore his dark hair one length, clipped below the ears so it curled over his collar like a spaniel’s, and when Enid looked at him, she still saw the sweet five-year-old boy who used to come to her apartment after kindergarten, dressed in his blue school uniform and cap. He was such a good boy, even then. “Mama’s sleeping, and I don’t want to wake her. She’s tired again. You don’t mind if I sit with you, do you, Nini?” he would ask. And she didn’t mind. She never minded anything about Philip.
“Roberto told me that one of Louise’s relatives tried to get into the apartment last night,” Enid said, “but he wouldn’t let them in.”
“It’s going to get ugly,” Philip said. “All those antiques.”
“Sotheby’s will sell them,” Enid said, “and that will be the end of it. The end of an era.”
Philip handed her a mug of coffee.
“There are always deaths in this building,” he said.
“Mrs. Houghton was old,” Enid said and, quickly changing the subject, asked, “What are you going to do today?”
“I’m still interviewing researchers,” Philip said.
A diversion, Enid thought, but decided not to delve into it. She could tell by Philip’s attitude that his writing wasn’t going well again. He was joyous when it was and miserable when it wasn’t.
Enid went back to her apartment and attempted to work on her column about Mrs. Houghton, but found that Philip had distracted her more than usual. Philip was a complicated character. Technically, he wasn’t her nephew but a sort of second cousin—his grandmother Flossie Davis was Enid’s stepmother. Enid’s own mother had died when she was a girl, and her father had met Flossie backstage at Radio City Music Hall during a business trip to New York. Flossie was
a Rockette and, after a quick marriage, had tried to live with Enid and her father in Texas. She’d lasted six months, at which point Enid’s father had moved the family to New York. When Enid was twenty, Flossie had had a daughter, Anna, who was Philip’s mother. Like Flossie, Anna was very beautiful, but plagued by demons. When Philip was nineteen, she’d killed herself. It was a violent, messy death. She’d thrown herself off the top of One Fifth.
It was the kind of thing that people always assume they will never forget, but that wasn’t true, Enid thought. Over time, the healthy mind had a way of erasing the most unpleasant details. So Enid didn’t remember the exact circumstances of what had happened on the day Anna had died; nor did she recall exactly what had happened to Philip after his mother’s death. She recalled the outlines—the drug addiction, the arrest, the fact that Philip had spent two weeks in jail, and the consequent months in rehab—but she was fuzzy on the specifics. Philip had taken his experiences and turned them into the novel Summer Morning, for which he’d won the Pulitzer Prize. But instead of pursuing an artistic career, Philip had become commercial, caught up in Hollywood glamour and money.
In the apartment next door, Philip was also sitting in front of his computer, determined to finish a scene in his new screenplay, Bridesmaids Revisited. He wrote two lines of dialogue and then, in frustration, shut down his computer. He got into the shower, wondering once more if he was losing his touch.
Ten years ago, when he was thirty-five, he’d had everything a man could want in his career: a Pulitzer Prize, an Oscar for screenwriting, money, and an unassailable reputation. And then the small fissures began to appear: movies that didn’t make as much as they should have at the box office. Arguments with young executives. Being replaced on two projects. At the time, Philip told himself it was irrelevant: It was the business, after all. But the steady stream of money he’d enjoyed as a young man had lately been reduced to a trickle. He didn’t have the heart to tell Nini, who would be disappointed and alarmed. Shampooing his hair, he again rationalized his situation, telling himself there was no need for worry—with the right project and a little bit of luck, he’d be on top of the world again.
A few minutes later, Philip stepped into the elevator and tousled his damp hair. Still thinking about his life, he was startled when the elevator doors opened on the ninth floor, and a familiar, musical voice chimed out, “Philip.” A second later, Schiffer Diamond got on. “Schoolboy,” she said, as if no time had passed at all, “I can’t believe you still live in this lousy building.”
Philip laughed. “Enid told me you were coming back.” He smirked, immediately falling into their old familiar banter. “And here you are.”
“Told you?” Schiffer said. “She wrote a whole column about it. The return of Schiffer Diamond. Made me sound like a middle-aged gunslinger.”
“You could never be middle-aged,” Philip said.
“Could be and am,” Schiffer replied. She paused and looked him up and down. “You still married?”
“Not for seven years,” Philip said, almost proudly.
“Isn’t that some kind of record for you?” Schiffer asked. “I thought you never went more than four years without getting hitched.”
“I’ve learned a lot since my two divorces,” Philip said, “i.e.: Do not get married again. What about you? Where’s your second husband?”
“Oh, I divorced him as well. Or he divorced me. I can’t remember.” She smiled at him in that particular way she had, making him feel like he was the only person in the world. For a moment, Philip was taken in, and then he reminded himself that he’d seen her use that smile on too many others.
The elevator doors opened, and Philip looked over her shoulder at the pack of paparazzi in front of the building. “Are those for you?” he asked, almost accusingly.
“No, silly. They’re for Mrs. Houghton. I’m not that famous,” she said. Hurrying across the lobby, she ran through the flashing cameras and jumped into the back of a white van.
Oh, yes, you are, Philip thought. You’re still that famous and more. Dodging the photographers, he headed across Fifth Avenue and down Tenth Street to the little library on Sixth Avenue where he sometimes worked. He suddenly felt irritated. Why had she come back? She would torture him again and then leave. There was no telling what that woman might do. Twenty years ago, she’d surprised him and bought an apartment in One Fifth and tried to position it as proof that she would always be with him. She was an actress, and she was nuts. They were all nuts, and after that last time, when she’d run off and married that goddamned count, he’d sworn off actresses for good.
He entered the cool of the library, taking a seat in a battered armchair. He picked up the draft of Bridesmaids Revisited, and after reading through a few pages, put it down in disgust. How had he, Philip Oakland, Pulitzer Prize–winning author, ended up writing this crap? He could imagine Schiffer Diamond’s reaction: “Why don’t you do your own work, Oakland? At least find something you care about personally.” And his own defense: “It’s called show ‘business.’ Not show ‘art.’”
“Bullshit,” she’d say. “You’re scared.”